How Christmas gives meaning to life.

When Samuel Huntington wrote “The Clash of Civilizations,” he was referring to the clash between Western Civilization and Islam.  But there is a clash within Western Civilization itself which may determine the outcome of the clash between Islam and the West.

Mark Steyn frames the problem by noting that “the future belongs to those who show up for it.”  After contrasting the West’s dismal birth rate with the Muslim world’s impressive birth rate, Steyn concludes that, barring a miracle, the future belongs to Islam, not to self-absorbed Westerners.

In 2004, shortly before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made a similar observation about the future of Europe:

“There is a strange lack of desire for a future.  Children, who are the future, are seen as a threat for the present; the idea is that they take something away from our life.  They are not felt as a hope, but rather as a limitation of the present.”

As Europeans lost faith in Christianity, they also lost the rationale for having children.  If life is mainly about self-actualization and acquiring enough money to be independent in old age, then children certainly can be a limitation.  The responsibilities involved in raising children mean that you won’t be able to do many of the things you dreamed of doing.  It means that self-fulfillment has to give way to self-sacrifice.

But judging by the falling birth rates in the U.S., and other Western countries, fewer and fewer are willing to make the sacrifice of having children.  Avoiding the “burden” of children, however, doesn’t seem to result in the promised land of self-fulfillment.  On the contrary, suicides are up and so are sales of anti-depressants.   Moreover, a plague of loneliness seems to have settled over the U.S.  In 1960, 87 % of adults lived with a spouse; in 2021 the number had fallen to 50 %.  Meanwhile, the nuclear family—once the chief institution in which people found companionship and purpose—has fallen on hard times.  New census data shows that only 18 % of American homes include married parents with children—down from 40 % in 1970.

Just as the breakdown of marriage and family doesn’t bode well for the health of the individual, it doesn’t bode well for the health of society.  Childless individuals tend to have less of a stake in the future.  They don’t have to worry about the kind of world their children or grandchildren will live in.  They are more inclined to adopt an attitude of “après moi, who cares.”  Why should they care, for instance, that the birth rate in Islamic countries far outpaces the Western birth rate?

One good reason to care comes to us every Christmas season.  Christianity starts with a young mother’s pregnancy and the birth of a special child.  The Christmas story reminds us of the supreme significance of childbirth and of the simple fact that without children there is no future.

But so, one might argue, does Islam.  Muslims take the injunction to “be fruitful and multiply” quite seriously.  Indeed, they seem to take it quite a bit more seriously than do most Christians.

There is a difference, however; Christianity brought with it an attitude of respect for women and children that had been missing in much of the ancient world, and that was nearly absent in Islam. It elevated the status of mother and child well above the existing standard, as well as the standard that was to be established under Islam.

Of course, children were valued in Islam, as in all of the ancient world, for the very practical reason that they provided a form of old-age insurance.  They would provide for parents when parents could no longer provide for themselves.  And Islam, perhaps more than most societies, valued children for another reason—as future warriors for their God, Allah.  Fighting and dying for Allah was and is very close to the heart of Islam.

About nine years ago, Daniel Greenfield wrote an insightful essay which explains a great deal about the religion of Islam and the secondary place it assigns to women and children.  The piece is entitled “The Gang Religion of Islam.”

Islam, says Greenfield, started off as a gang of raiders who turned into a band of warriors.  About two-thirds of Ibn Ishaq’s The Life of Muhammad is taken up with fighting:  preparation for raids or battles, descriptions of raids or battles, division of spoils after battles, and memorialization of warriors killed in battles.  The gang had a code which “invested their actions with meaning” and “kept order in their ranks.”  The code was based on the teachings of Muhammad who taught that Allah was the supreme God.  Allah commanded his followers to fight against his enemies—that is, non-believers—until there was no other religion but Islam.  Strange as it may seem, there is not much more to Islam than that.  As Greenfield puts it, “If Islam stands for anything, it’s killing non-Muslims” (and also Muslims who do not adhere to the correct form of Islam.)

How about women?  As in the urban street gangs of today, women don’t figure prominently in the “gang religion:”

“[The gang] finds meaning in the ethos of the fight and in the comradeship of fellow gang members.  That is why jihad is so central to Islam.  It is why women occupy such an inferior position.  Jihad is the gang culture of Islam.  Its bonding rituals are central to Islam whose original elements derive mainly from the raids of Muhammed and his companions against the more civilized peoples of the region.”

Former Muslim Nonie Darwish makes a similar observation.  “In Islam, after believing in Allah,” she writes, “the number one priority for a Muslim believer is not family; it is jihad.”  Consequently, “a man who is devoted to his wife and children in a monogamous marriage is a threat to jihad.”

Women in Islam have to play second fiddle to jihad lest they disrupt the comradeship of the warrior gang.  They also play second fiddle to the 72 brides that supposedly await the jihadist in paradise.  The “other women” in their husband’s lives are the six dozen perfectly-formed and eternally-youthful “dark-eyed” virgins. As described in the Koran, paradise seems to have been designed almost exclusively for men. Each man has his own private harem populated with women who seem to have been created solely for the purpose of serving him. One assumes that earthly wives are considered unworthy of the honor.

In the gang culture of Islam, children, likewise, are less likely to be viewed as individuals, and more likely to be viewed in a utilitarian way as future soldiers of Allah.  Sometimes they are sacrificed to the jihad while they are still young.  In Palestine, for instance, youngsters are indoctrinated from a very early age to believe that the most meaningful thing they can do with their lives is to kill Jews for the sake of Allah.  They are taught this in schools, summer camps, and on children’s television.  In Gaza, missile sites are often situated in schools so that Israelis, who place a higher value on the lives of children, won’t bomb them (i.e., the missile sites). If children get killed, they can always be used for propaganda purposes.

 In Christianity, however, all these priorities get reversed.  Jesus tells his followers that unless they become as little children, they won’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Due in large part to the Christmas narrative in the Gospel of Luke, women and children in Christian societies are not simply valued for their utility, they are reverenced as children of God.  Indeed, the Incarnation elevated the value of everyone—men and women alike.

As I wrote elsewhere:

“Christmas is a celebration of that moment of enlightenment when the full value of human life became apparent… The Incarnation revealed God to man, but also, as St. John Paul II observed, it revealed man to himself.  The birth of Christ revealed that the worth of men and women was far greater than anything that had hitherto been presumed.”

If what Christians believe is true—that during the reign of Augustus Caesar, God became one of us—then everything must be seen in a whole new light.  That he entered the world not as a full grown individual but as a member of a family ought to give us second thoughts about the current devaluation of family and the current threat to children from abortionists, sex-educators, transgender fanatics, and other assorted pied pipers of our age.

There is a war within Western Civilization over the meaning of life.  And the outcome of that war may well determine the outcome of the civilizational clash with Islam.

Not surprisingly, the leftist forces in the West have formed a tacit alliance with radical Islam—a partnership which is frequently referred to as the “red-green alliance.”  The alliance is not surprising because both leftists and Islamists share similar attitudes toward family life and toward life itself.

In both cases, human life has little intrinsic value.  In Islam, humans are meant to serve the jihad, while Western leftists expect humans to serve the state (or “the revolution” in places where they do not yet control the state).

Accordingly, children are indoctrinated to transfer their loyalty from their family to the jihad (in the case of Islam) or from their family to the secular state (in the case of leftists.)  In the Christian view, however, love and loyalty to God is not to the exclusion of family loyalty.  Indeed. God prizes family so much that he became a member of a human family.  Those on the left may talk about human dignity, but their enthusiasm for abortion, euthanasia, pornography and casual sex suggests that it is all talk.  Like many Muslims, they feel contempt and hatred for whole classes of human beings.  Muslims are enjoined by Allah to hate unbelievers.  Leftists are enjoined by their leaders to hate the unvaxxed—as well as pro-lifers, home-schoolers, orthodox Christians and Jews, and anyone who fails to conform to their “woke” ideology.

According to Christian belief, the remedy to all this hatred is to be found in the birth of the Savior.  And the only sure foundation for human dignity resides in the fact that he became one of us.  In the words of “O Holy Night,” the night of Christ’s birth was the night that “the soul felt it’s worth.”  It was at that point in history that the full meaning of human dignity was revealed.  In place of Islam’s low estimate of human life and in place of the secular left’s view of us as cogs in a social machine, Christianity offers the “Wondrous Babe of Light”—at once, both fully human and fully divine.

This article originally appeared in the December 25th, 2021 edition of FrontPage magazine.

Picture credit: Pixabay

How much do Christians and Muslims have in common? Plenty of clues can be found in the celebration of Christmas.

“The man that hath no music in himself/ Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds/ Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils” –William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Every year around this time, Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), sends out a Christmas message to Christians. The gist of the message is that Christians and Muslims have much in common because “Muslims also love and revere Jesus as one of God’s greatest messengers to mankind.” And to prove it he quotes from chapter 3, verse 45 of the Koran:

“Behold! The angels said: ‘O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God.'”

The Catholic authors of Nostra Aetate probably had this verse in mind when they declared that Muslims “revere” Jesus and “honor Mary.” Statements like this, along with the fact that Muslims esteem prophets and martyrs and engage in prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage, are seen by many Catholics as proof that Islam and Christianity are very similar religions. Christians would do well, however, not to take too much comfort in these apparent similarities. Although Christians and Muslims share some similar texts and similar practices, the two faiths are separated by a wide gulf.

A close examination of texts will reveal the chasm, but another way of grasping the crucial differences between Islam and Christianity is to note that the two faiths have a completely different “feel.” When we talk about a “gut feeling” or “getting a feeling” for a new activity, we mean that we understand something in an intuitive, experiential way. It’s one thing to read an instructional manual on tennis, and another thing to play it.

Christmas: A Point of Reference

One way to appreciate the different “feel” of the two religions is to think about Christmas. It means a lot to Christians. They decorate Christmas trees, set up mangers, exchange Christmas cards, sing carols, and celebrate solemn yet joyful liturgies. On the other hand, although Muslims celebrate a number of religious holy days, Christmas is not one of them—which, when you think about it, is a bit strange. Muslims, according to Hooper, “love and revere Jesus,” but they studiously ignore his birthday.

Muslims have the Christmas story (or, at least, a truncated version of it), but they don’t have Christmas. Why? Well, essentially because there’s nothing to celebrate. To Muslims, Jesus is not the redeeming savior of the world, but simply a prophet whose main job, it seems, was to announce the coming of Muhammad.

Not only does Islam lack Christmas, it lacks many of the humanizing elements that we associate with Christmas. The central image we identify with Christmas is that of the Holy Family. The fact that God became a member of a human family immeasurably elevated the importance of family, marriage, and motherhood. But there is no corresponding elevation of the family under Islam. According to Nonie Darwish, who grew up in Egypt, “Muslim weddings are more about sex and money. They do not convey the holy covenant of marriage.” The standard Egyptian marriage contract, she says, comes with questions about the bride’s virginity, the amount of the dowry, and three spaces for the husband to record the names and addresses of wife number one, wife number two, and wife number three. And although Muslims supposedly honor Mary, this hasn’t translated into a high regard for women in general. In the Koran, women are described as inferior beings, and they are treated as such in most of the Muslim world. The elevation of women was mainly a Christian achievement. It stemmed from the belief that all are equal in Christ, from the high status assigned to Mary, and from the elevation of marriage to a sacrament.

And then there’s music. The wonder of Christianity is captured in the great Christian hymns and chants, but especially in the traditional carols sung at Christmas time. They seem to come from another world and, although some of them are centuries old, they seem to remain imperishable. The message they convey is joy: “joy to the world,” “let nothing you dismay,” “tidings of comfort and joy,” “love and joy come to you,” “joy, joy, joy”…

Christianity is repeatedly attacked as restrictive and repressive, but these songs suggest something else, something immensely liberating. Once again, there is nothing like this in Islam. Beyond the chanted call to prayer, Islamic spirituality has little place for music. In fact, there is some debate among Islamic scholars about whether or not music is forbidden by Islamic tradition. But the anti-music forces seem to have the stronger case. In one of the hadith, Muhammad is quoted as saying, “Allah mighty and majestic…commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic era of ignorance. On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress.”

As historian Jamie Glazov points out in his book United in Hate, there is a deep suspicion of music in Islam. Sayyid Qutb, the chief architect of modern Islamism, “reviled” music: “Like Lenin, he deemed music a distraction from the raging hatred necessary for destruction.” Throughout Islamic history, says Glazov, there have been numerous attempts to ban music. In our time, “the Taliban illegalized music completely in Afghanistan, and Ayatollah Khomeini banned most music from Iranian radio and television.”

Khomeini’s puritanism seems to have extended beyond music to a rejection of any form of good cheer. Here he is on the subject of jokes:

“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”

No jokes? You may be tempted to laugh. Just don’t do it in the wrong place. This past summer, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister declared in a speech on “moral corruption” that women should not laugh in public in Turkey.

For most Christians, Christmas holiday cheer also includes partaking of the good cheer provided by alcoholic drinks. With the exception of some (mostly American) denominations, Christians have lived fairly comfortably with liquor. Indeed, wine is at the heart of the Catholic liturgy, and orders of Catholic monks did much to develop the art of winemaking. Although the Gospels decry drunkenness, Christian tradition does not condemn drinking in itself. Islam does. According to the Koran, wine is an abomination devised by Satan.

The difference between the Christian and Islamic views on drinking may not appear to be crucial, but it provides a clue to a crucial difference. It’s not just wine versus no wine that’s at issue but two entirely different ways of looking at life. You could call it balanced versus unbalanced. Islam sees one side of alcohol—the destructive, dangerous side—and comes up with a one-sided solution: ban it. Christianity sees that alcohol is both subtle and complex—just as the label on your wine bottle claims—and suggests that it be enjoyed in moderation.

Islam’s suspicion of wine, just like its suspicion of music, seems overly severe. Wine, like music, is one of the great human comforts, and to suppress it, as Islam does, strikes the Western consciousness as slightly inhuman. By contrast, the Church has always followed the maxim that grace doesn’t destroy nature but fulfills it. In this view, the supernatural doesn’t replace the natural but completes it, raises it up, redeems it. So Jesus Christ raised bread and wine to the supernatural level, and did the same for marriage by making it a sacrament. One of the beauties of Christianity is that it adds layers of meaning to ordinary human activities, giving them a specialness beyond what is ordinarily assigned to them. Despite, or perhaps because of its call to participate in the divine life, Christianity had a humanizing influence wherever it spread.

Good Cheer vs. Great Fear

Christians theologians who scour the Koran for bits and pieces of text that seem to harmonize Christianity and Islam might do well to pay attention instead to the different “feel” or “spirit” of the two faiths.

The distinctive spirit of Christianity, like the spirit of Christmas, is a spirit of good cheer. The good cheer comes from knowing that we are freed from our sins, but it also comes from the knowledge that we are sons and daughters of God. That concept—adoption as children of God—brings with it much responsibility, but it also provides us with good reason to rejoice.

The distinctive spirit of Islam, by contrast, is a spirit of fear. The Christian idea that God is a father who takes a personal interest in his children is alien to the tenets of Islam. The Allah of the Koran is as remote and capricious as any caliph. Humans are his slaves, not his sons and daughters. And he sends no Holy Spirit to comfort his people. Although the Koran borrows the title “Holy Spirit” from Christian scripture, the Holy Spirit in Islam remains just that—a borrowing: a term torn from context and signifying nothing more than Muhammad’s penchant for name-dropping.

Islam, with its thousand-and-one laws and corresponding punishments in this world and the next, is a religion of the letter rather than the spirit—the perfect illustration of what Saint Paul meant when he said “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper ends his Christmas message with the usual boilerplate about “shared religious heritage” and “building bridges of interfaith understanding.” Given CAIR’s past involvement in terrorist funding and its recent designation as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates, one might be justified in questioning his sincerity. However, even on the assumption that he means every word, the deeper problem remains. Hooper concludes his message of reassurance to Christians by saying “We have more in common than we think.” Well, yes, if you think that having a common bond is just a matter of drawing up a list of shared vocabulary, then maybe that’s so.

But on a deeper level, the claim is not convincing. Whatever superficial similarities there may be, the spirit of Christianity is radically different from the spirit of Islam. Like so many other Islamic PR men, Hooper knows the words, but he doesn’t hear the music. Unfortunately, a good many well-meaning and eager-for-dialogue Christians suffer from a similar tone-deafness. They fail to realize that Islam marches to the beat of a decidedly different drummer.

This article originally appeared in the December 21, 2014 edition of the Catholic World Report.

Pictured above: The Holy Family

Picture credit: Pixabay

A few weeks ago, Bishop Joseph Strickland sent an open letter to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as the group met in Baltimore for its fall plenary assembly.

It was a remarkable letter in which Strickland accused his fellow bishops of silence in the face of “the false messages constantly flowing from the Vatican under the leadership of Pope Francis,” essentially accusing the Vatican of promoting heresy.

But even more remarkable was the bishops’ response: silence.

Granted, I may have missed an objection here or there, but Strickland’s charges are so grave and so sweeping that one would expect not just a few objections, but a whole boatload of them. For example, he refers to the bishops as “silent shepherds, unwilling to risk speaking up in the face of evil and destructive forces that threaten the Church.” He suggests, in addition, that their actions are reminiscent of Judas’s betrayal of Christ.

Moreover, Strickland insists that the bishops cannot claim to be ignorant of the damage Francis has done:

“There can be no bishop who is unaware of statements that Pope Francis has made that are unambiguous denials of the Catholic faith. For example, Francis has stated publicly…that all religions are a path to God. … How many souls will be lost who will accept his erroneous statement that all religions will lead to salvation? …Every bishop and cardinal should publicly and unequivocally state that Francis no longer teaches the Catholic faith. Souls are at stake!

Stating the Obvious

There’s more, but as you can see, Strickland has put his fellow bishops in a corner. They can’t plead ignorance about what Francis has said and done. Anyone who has paid the least attention already knows about his heretical opinions and statements. Moreover, anyone who can read can see that Francis “is actively opposing the divine truths of our Catholic faith.” All you need is The Catholic Catechism (or the New Testament) in one hand and the “teachings of Francis” (as Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández calls them) in the other. Francis is plainly and frequently in opposition to Church teachings.

Much of what Strickland says in his letter is obviously true. Why, then, have the vast majority of bishops (at the time of this writing) chosen to remain silent?

Fear, of course, is one possible motive. Numerous priests and prelates who have challenged Francis’s orthodoxy are now unemployed. They have been removed from office, laicized, and in some cases, excommunicated (for examples see here). Such things, along with the possibility of relocation to some chilly, far-away diocese, will certainly figure into some bishops’ calculations.

Others are probably taking a wait-and-see approach in the hope that the whole thing will blow over. They may reason that if everyone maintains silence, Strickland’s letter will soon be forgotten, or else he will be successfully portrayed as a fringe figure in much the same way that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganó’s critics dismiss him as nothing more than a purveyor of baseless conspiracy theories.

Still others will reckon that the ailing Francis has only a short time to live, and it’s wiser to wait him out and hope that the next pope will be a less divisive figure.

The Spartacus Strategy

In the event of some sort of showdown, it’s difficult to say how things will fall out. It’s possible that many more bishops sympathize with Strickland’s views than is generally assumed.

Nevertheless, many of them may be unwilling to give him the response he desires. Why? Because they fear a schism in the Church more than they fear a few more years under a bad pope. Bad popes come and go, but a schism can last for decades and even centuries. So we shouldn’t automatically assume that those who won’t sign on to Strickland’s “call to arms” are thereby in Francis’s camp.

Speaking of a call to arms, let’s consider a tactic that many Catholics have undoubtedly already considered. Let’s call it the “I am Spartacus” strategy. In the 1960 movie Spartacus, the leader of a slave rebellion and his army are surrounded by the much larger Roman army. When the Romans offer the slaves their lives in exchange for revealing their leader’s identity, three men stand up almost simultaneously, shouting “I am Spartacus!” And within three seconds the entire slave army rises to its feet shouting “I am Spartacus!”

Despite the fact that all the men are executed as a result, the film remains immensely popular. I suspect it has a special resonance for Catholics because Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) is portrayed as a sacrificial Christ-like figure who in the end is crucified.

I’m guessing that many Catholics already envision a scene where a large number of bishops stand up one by one to cast their voice vote for Strickland, to the progressives’ chagrin. Unfortunately, the “Spartacus strategy” is a long shot. It’s the kind of tactic that works well with unionized workers who provide some essential service and are backed by the public and/or other unions who are willing to join their strike. Truckers, teachers, and dockworkers often get what they want. But the Spartacus strategy doesn’t seem advisable for a group of men who on average are past middle age, only meet once or twice a year, and may lack the requisite courage to resist.

An Army, or Eyebrows?

On the other hand, Strickland’s actions are not an oddity. Throughout Church history, saints and prophets have rebuked prelates for their inaction and have called for spiritual warfare against the powers of darkness. The difference between then and now is that today’s bishops are not used to being reminded about the Devil, hellfire, lost souls, and “dying for Christ.” Another difference is that Spartacus raised a rebel slave army but thus far, Strickland seems only to have raised a few eyebrows among the Catholic commentariat.

Although I have reservations about the Spartacus strategy, it has sometimes proved successful. Two instances that come to mind involving religious belief are the mass conversion of Aztec Indians to Christianity following the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the mass rejection of the Vatican declaration, Fiducia Supplicans by African bishops less than a year ago.

On January 11 of this year, the African bishops issued a formal protest titled, “No Blessing for Homosexual Couples in the African Churches.” The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) declared that Fiducia Supplicans “has sown misconception and unrest in the minds of many lay faithful, consecrated persons, and even pastors…” The president of the symposium, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, maintained that the West had lost the meaning of marriage and framed the Vatican document as an example of “cultural colonialism” — the West trying to impose its values on other cultures.

Surprisingly, Francis seemed reluctant to make an issue of the rejection. Rather, he latched onto Ambongo’s contention that homosexuality is an affront to African culture. Francis observed that criticism of same-sex blessings is “a special case” in Africa because “for them homosexuality is something ‘bad’ from a cultural point of view (and) they don’t tolerate it.” In other words, Francis looks upon Africa as a cultural backwater, but is happy to use the “respect-our-diversity” demand as a way to extricate himself from a difficult situation.

What shall we make of this? And does the African affair throw any light on the Strickland affair? Without pretending to have any definitive answers for the American bishops and for American Catholics (to whom Strickland addresses his final appeal) here are a few things to consider.

Playing the Odds

First, Francis knows how to weigh the odds. And he’s willing to back down when the odds don’t favor him. More Christians live in Africa than any other continent, and Catholics are the largest Christian denomination in Africa. But strength of will is just as important as strength of numbers, and Africa’s bishops seem to have both. They know their faith and they know when it’s being fiddled with. “No blessing for homosexual couples in the African churches” doesn’t leave much room for dialogue. Rather, it calls up memories of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. leading civil rights marchers through choruses of “We Shall Overcome.”

Second, Francis has discerned that the American bishops are, for the most part, company men. They are not singing “We shall not be moved”; rather, they seem willing to dance to any tune that Francis pipes for them, whether it be an Indian rain dance to avert climate change or a rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In” to accompany illegal border crossers.

Third, the American bishops aren’t getting any younger. The approach of death forces most people to think harder about life after death. Most Catholics likely assume that bishops have less to worry about in that regard than most of us. But, as Strickland keeps reminding his fellow bishops, it’s the other way around. The Apostles’ successors have more to fear because more has been asked of them. And yet, says Strickland, “You who are entrusted with the keeping of souls choose to speak not a word of the spiritual danger which abounds.”

For bishops, this is hard to ignore. Strickland speaks to them directly and personally. They may say nothing in reply, and yet they must realize that a reply is called for. If you were the target of such a letter, and you were convinced of your innocence, wouldn’t you feel compelled to respond? Perhaps one of the bishops — perhaps many — are waiting for a second or third man to stand up and reinforce Strickland’s charges before they can muster the courage to raise their own voices.

‘My Sheep Know My Voice’

Strickland provides some incentive: “Do you not know that our Lord will send forth his avenging angels to heap coals of fire upon the heads of those who were called to be His Apostles and have not guarded what He has given unto them?”

“Avenging angels?” “Coals of fire?” People don’t speak that way anymore, do they? No, they don’t. But Jesus did. So whose do you follow: the voice of Jesus or the wisdom of the day?

Right now, Strickland’s letter may seem to be a dead letter. But not if enough good people respond to its final sentence:

“I ask the faithful to pray fervently that all shepherds find their voices and say with me, “Que viva Cristo Rey — long live Christ the King, Truth Incarnate!”

To bishops of a certain kind, that may sound corny; to others it will sound like a call to action.

This article originally appeared in the December 3, 2024 issue of The Stream.

Pictured above: Saint George and the Dragon Statue in Bratislava

Photo credit: Pixabay

A 2019 PEW poll showed that less than one third of U.S Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. By contrast, 69 % said they believed the bread and wine “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

In response, the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called for a multi-year National Eucharistic Revival Campaign in order to raise awareness of the Real Presence.

In July of 2024, the Real Presence Coalition (RPC), an informal group of influential lay Catholics, commissioned a national polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies, to conduct a survey of faithful Catholics to uncover the reasons for the loss of faith in the Real Presence and to recommend solutions.

In mid-October, the RPC published the findings of the survey and submitted them to the bishop’s conference for their consideration when they meet this November.

Hopefully, the bishops will pay attention because the survey results provide many insights into the causes of the loss of faith in the Real Presence as well as solid recommendations for reviving faith in one of the central teachings of the Catholic Church.

Here are six recommendations provided by the Real Presence Coalition:

• Encourage the practice of receiving the Eucharist on the tongue while kneeling
• Catechize the faithful (fully 43 % of Catholics who believed that the bread and wine are only symbols, erroneously believed that this is what the Church teaches)
• Encourage greater reverence for the Eucharist (through proper dress and manner, etc.)
• Eliminate Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.
• Withhold the Eucharist from public officials who obstinately reject Catholic teaching.
• Increase the number of Eucharistic events (e.g., Eucharistic Adoration, Eucharistic processions, etc.)

In short, the survey results strongly encourage the time-tested method of religious education known as “lex orandi, lex credendi” (The law of prayer is the law of belief.)

It certainly worked for me when, as a child, I attended Mass with my family at St. Joseph’s, the magnificent gothic cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut. The Mass was in Latin, incense rose from the altar and the sound of Gregorian chant filled the church (the original cathedral, it should be noted, was destroyed by fire in 1956).

The liturgy reinforced everything we were learning in our catechism classes about the deep mystery of the Eucharist, and the proper reverential response to the Real Presence of Christ. In those days it was hard to imagine how anyone could be casual about the reception of Holy Communion.

So, if lex orandi worked once, it ought to work again. The hope is that once Catholics are better catechized, learn greater respect for the Eucharist, and adopt a more reverent liturgy, faith in the Real Presence will come almost automatically.

But few things come automatically, and there are reasons to believe that the road back to a fuller appreciation of the Eucharist will be strewn with obstacles. It’s not only the sense of the sacred that needs to be recovered, but also a sense of reality. The shift to the Novus Ordo liturgy in the mid-sixties was part of a much larger paradigm shift—a shift away from reality.

One largely unexamined cause of the loss of faith in the Real Presence is that more and more people have come to reject the idea of reality itself. In the mid-sixties, the Eastern idea that reality is an illusion became popular among some prominent American psychologists. Carl Rogers, a leading figure in the human potential movement, included a chapter entitled “Do we Need a Reality?” in one of his last books. The answer? No, we don’t. “There are as many realities as there are people,” wrote Rogers, “and what is real for me now is not real for me tomorrow.”

One of the main takeaways from reading Rogers or the many popularizers of his ideas is that we are not bound by other peoples’ realities. Rather we should create our own reality. This, of course, is just another way of saying that reality is subjective: each self is the final arbiter of what is real.

Of course, most people don’t take the idea that reality is subjective to its logical conclusion. If we jump off a tall building, we don’t expect that the law of gravity will be suspended for our sake. We understand that there’s no escaping the real presence of the pavement below.

Yet, when it comes to other matters, we are all too ready to deny important realities. When confronted with the “inconvenient “real presence of a baby in his mother’s womb, we can come up with numerous ways of denying or minimizing that reality.  Likewise, when confronted with irrefutable biological evidence of la difference, many still insist that a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man. Moreover, they contend that a “marriage” between two people of the same sex is the real thing, and that there is nothing wrong with letting boys into the girls’ shower area. Given the denialist nature of our culture, it should be no surprise that almost 70 percent of Catholics now think of the consecrated bread and wine as merely a symbol. One can chalk this ignorance up to poor catechizes, but there seems to be something else at play. The scriptural evidence for the Real Presence is so overwhelming (particularly in John 6) that one has to suspect that some catechists and religion teachers are deliberately withholding it.  

One thing that bishops and Catholic educators who want to revive belief in the Real Presence should consider is that many Catholics simply don’t want to believe in the Real Presence. It’s quite probable that many prefer to think of the Eucharist as a symbol.

One of the reasons the idea is so seductive is that objective reality makes demands on us. The sacrament of marriage, for example, binds us to another person ‘til death do us part.” It’s not for nothing that newly marrieds are said to have “tied the knot.”

For millennia, all of this was largely accepted in Christian cultures as the right way to look at marriage, the Eucharist, Holy Orders and the other sacraments. They had a binding nature. Then came the “Me decades” with its emphasis on self-actualization and self-esteem, and much of the older emphasis on self-denial, responsibilities, and obligations was washed away. Instead, we came to believe that we each had infinite potentials and that we owed it to ourselves to keep our options open.

The revolt against reality in our society came at a time when psychologists and self-help gurus were insisting that we all have unlimited potentials. We can, they assured us, become anything we want and do anything we desire. But, at some level, most people understand that reality limits us. A real marriage binds us to one person rather than another, a pregnancy is a reality that creates new responsibilities and obligations. In almost all cases, the arrival of a new baby means that many of our potentials will have to be left unfulfilled.

Likewise, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist also makes demands on us. Are we worthy to receive? Should we make an examination of conscience? Go to confession? Or, in the spirit of the times, should we just assume that we’re okay with God who, in the modern view is all-understanding and more non-judgmental than any therapist?

Before receiving communion, the faithful pray, “O Lord I am not worthy,” but after sixty years of exposure to self-esteem psychology in Catholic schools, colleges, and seminaries, many Catholics feel just fine about themselves. They don’t want to do any deep dive into the state of their souls that might upset their therapeutic equilibrium. That’s why so many Catholics prefer to think of the Eucharist as merely a symbol. We now live in a culture that stands in almost total opposition to any sense of unworthiness.

Standing with one foot in Catholic culture and the other in the therapeutic culture can create a lot of tension, but the tension can be relieved by demoting the Eucharist to a symbolic status. As Flannery O’Connor once remarked, “If it’s just a symbol, to hell with it.” She understood that a world of endless signs and symbols with no reality at the core should not be taken seriously.

One of the recommendations of the Real Presence Coalition which ties in here is that the Eucharist should be withheld from public officials who obstinately reject Catholic teaching. Currently, there are numerous public officials in the U.S. who receive communion despite the fact that they obstinately reject Catholic teaching about abortion, same-sex “marriage” and other issues. The fact that the Church has done practically nothing about it suggests that many in the hierarchy don’t take the Real Presence seriously.

To add insult to injury, Pope Francis himself has made it clear that, as far as he is concerned, the Eucharist is no big deal. When Nancy Pelosi showed up at the altar rail in St. Peter’s shortly after Archbishop Cordileone forbade her from receiving in San Francisco, no objection was raised in the Vatican. In fact, Francis warmly greeted Pelosi and her husband upon their arrival.

Catholicism is a reality-based faith, and many in the hierarchy are badly in need of a dose of that reality. One only has to consider the unreality of the Synod on Synodality to see the problem. The Synod participants have spent the last five years searching for the signs of the times with little to show for it. Indeed, the Synod’s meanderings lend credence to Macbeth’s conclusion that “life is a tale told by an idiot…signifying nothing.”

Well, there may be exceptions.Some of the symbols now floating around in the Church do seem to have an obvious meaning. Take the Vatican’s cute new animie-like mascot for the Holy Year 2025 . Her name is “Luce.” She seems to signify something, but what she signifies may not be very pleasant. Why, for example, does she carry a witch’s stang and a rainbow-colored rosary? “Luce?” It’s likely that Vatican prelates who have recognized the name and noticed the stang are anxiously hoping that hell, also, is just a symbol.

Pictured above: First Communion

Picture credit: Pixabay

Why “waiting him out” is not a good strategy

Suppose that the Democrats squeeze out a win in the presidential election in two weeks. And suppose that, shortly afterward, new revelations provide overwhelming evidence that it was rigged. Should Republicans simply shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh well, there’s nothing we can do at this point. We’ll just have to hope we can recapture the presidency in the next election”?

That would be an anemic and cowardly response to a massive fraud. A stolen election is no small thing. It’s a crime of epic proportions. And justice demands that the crime be rectified, even if that requires investigations, impeachments, and removal from office. To wait it out and hope for the best would be highly irresponsible. It would give the Democrats four more years to solidify their power, four more years of executive orders and congressional legislation designed to deprive ordinary citizens of their rights while expanding the reach of government. In addition, it would mean four more years of illegal immigration — ensuring Democrats of a permanent voting majority and resulting in the formation of a one-party state. In short, the “wait-it-out” strategy would result in the extinction of the Republican Party.

Yet, Catholics are currently faced with a similar scenario — and many seem to have opted for the “let’s-wait-it-out-and-hope-for-the-best” response.

Packing the Electoral College

Some claim that the election of Jorge Bergoglio to the papacy was invalid, either because the election was rigged or because former Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation was invalid. Others suggest that even if his election were valid, Bergoglio has lost the papacy due to numerous instances of public heresy and should therefore be removed.

Indeed, in an October 13 sermon, a well-known Italian priest, Fr. Giorgio Maria Faré, cited all three of these reasons  (and a few more) why the “so-called Pope Francis” is not the true pope, and he called on Catholics to resist his heretical teachings. The sermon, which is in Italian, has since gone viral.

But even in the unlikely event that Pope Francis were somehow removed from the papacy, the probability is that the next pope would enforce and extend his heretical program and policies

Why so? Because, as theologian and journalist Jules Gomes contends in a recent Stream article, Francis has, in effect, already rigged the next papal election by stacking the College of Cardinals with 20 new electors “who align with his agenda on LGBT rights, synodality, climate change, migrant issues and social justice to pave the way for a successor who will uphold his legacy.”

“Francis,” writes Gomes, “will have created 111 (nearly 80 percent) of the 140 electors,” thus exceeding the limit of 120 electors set by Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II.

Whether you call it “stacking” or “rigging,” Francis has quite clearly put his thumb on the scales of the next papal election.

Style and Strategy

According to Gomes, this “unexpected move” is “causing disappointment among faithful Catholics expecting a change of guard with a new eventual pope.” But the fact that many faithful Catholics were expecting such a thing suggests that they never understood just how political and calculating Francis is. Those who have followed his career understand that he has no intention of leaving the next papal election up to chance or the influence of the Holy Spirit. By adding 20 additional Francis clones, Bergoglio hopes to leave very little room for the Holy Spirit to guide the preprogrammed prelates.

In short, Francis has been largely successful in his campaign to deceive faithful Catholics. As Joseph D’Hippolito recently pointed out, Francis is guilty of duplicity. For instance, he frequently speaks out about the dangers of LGBT ideology, yet consistently appoints pro-LGBT prelates to influential positions.

In addition, Francis purposely avoids making pronouncements that might be construed as “ex-cathedra” in order to avoid the charge of formal heresy. Unfortunately, many conservative Catholic commentators who would rather not rock the boat have fallen for this ploy. Francis, they say, has not fallen into public heresy because his more controversial statements are often delivered “off-the-cuff” in informal settings.

It’s often said that this is simply his “style.” But it should be clear by now that casual heretical remarks are not just Francis’s style, they are also part of his strategy

Opposed by an Entire Continent

Here’s what Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, had to say about it:

“The pope goes slow because he wants to be sure that the changes have a deep impact … He knows very well what he is doing. You have to realize that he is aiming at a reform that is irreversible.”

The pope may know what he is doing, but it’s not at all clear that some conservative Catholic columnists understand what he’s up to. They keep insisting that, contrary to all appearances, Francis has never technically crossed the red line of heresy, and is thus the legitimate pope.

One of the arguments that defenders of Francis often employ is that the Universal and Peaceful Acceptance/Adherence of Francis by the Church proves that he is the pope. The UPA argument has been proposed by several prominent theologians. But, as Catholic author Matthew McCusker points out, these defenders fail to mention that the very same theologians who proposed UPA also held that a pope who falls into public heresy thereby ceases to be pope, and the Church must withdraw universal and peaceful adherence from him.

So, a pope who is universally and peacefully accepted at the beginning of his papacy could have his UPA withdrawn should he fall into public heresy. If that sounds confusing and contradictory, it’s only because it is. The upshot is that the UPA argument for a pope’s validity is very shaky.

Moreover, as McCusker points out, “Francis is not universally and peacefully adhered to by the Catholic Church … On the contrary, many Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, publicly refuse to submit to his teaching on faith and morals as contained in a number of documents.” Indeed, Francis’s “teachings” on sex, gender, and homosexuality have been universally rejected by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (the equivalent of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.) In short, a whole continent of Catholics refuses to adhere to his revisions of Catholic doctrine.

An Increasingly Tough Job

Still, many conservative and traditional Catholics continue to defend the legitimacy of Francis’s papacy. They are called “popesplainers” because they expend much energy in trying to explain away what, to many others, looks like public heresy on the part of Francis.

The popesplainers have their job cut out for them because, as Fernandez said in a 2015 interview, “If one day he (Francis) should intuit that he’s running out of time … you can be sure he will speed up.” And sure enough, Francis seems to have reached warp speed in his efforts to change the Church. Just last month during a visit to Singapore, he informed the world that “all religions are paths to God.” This seems to be a direct contradiction of Jesus’s command, “Go therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

I’m not sure how the “popesplainers” will explain that contradiction away, but I’m sure they’ll try. Meanwhile, they can always fall back on the “discredit-the- Church” argument — namely, that if you raise the possibility that Francis is not pope, you will discredit the Church’s teaching authority. This is the position of Catholic columnist Jeffrey Mirus, who observed, “the Holy Spirit, through the charism of infallibility, makes it impossible for a pope to bind the whole Church to error.”

But, as I suggested a while back, this is a circular argument: “It assumes as true the thing that has to be proven — namely, that Francis is really the pope.” Anyone who adopted this position in the early years of his papacy would have been faced with the task of explaining on an almost monthly basis how this or that pronouncement by Francis is really in conformity with Church teaching despite all appearances to the contrary.

Credibility of the Church’s Teaching Authority?

As I noted in my earlier piece:

The possibility that Francis is the pope does far more damage to the credibility of the Church than the possibility that he is not. If Francis continues to introduce novel and divisive changes to Church teachings on an almost weekly basis, then the credibility of the Church and the papacy will decline rapidly. If, on the other hand, he is revealed to be an imposter intent on subverting the Church, then much of the current turmoil would be seen in a new light. It would be seen not as the result of some inherent flaw in the Church, but as the result of a deliberate plot to destroy the Church.

The truth is that during the 11 years of Francis’s papacy, the health of the Catholic Church has declined markedly. In most of the Western world, church attendance has dropped to levels never before seen. Moreover, many Catholics seem unacquainted with central articles of the faith. For example, only about one-third of Catholics now believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and more than half of U.S. Catholics favor same-sex marriage.

Obviously, the strategy of “let’s wait it out and hope for the best” isn’t working. The longer Catholics wait, the more difficult it will be to rectify Francis’s usurpation of the papacy. When faced with the hypothetical example of a rigged presidential election, most Catholics, I think, would realize that time is of the essence. Waiting for four years until the next election would only give the “riggers” more time to strengthen their hold on the government.

The same logic applies to the next papal election. It doesn’t make much sense to wait and see what sort of man the cardinals will elect. We already know that Francis has, in effect, pre-rigged the election by stacking the conclave with men who align with his own thinking. In purely human terms, the odds are that the next pope will be another Francis, not another John Paul II or a Pius XII.

Of course, God has his own plans, and faithful Catholics may be in for a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, it would be the height of presumption to assume that God will reward the timidity, indifference, and inaction of the current crop of Catholics with a holy and brilliant pope.

In defense of their own inactivity, some Catholics have claimed that the Church’s historical response to antipopes was to “wait it out.” But according to some critics of overly cautious Catholics, this is simply not so.

As Ann Barnhardt correctly notes, “the Church has aggressively sought to resolve Antipapacies — and there have been dozens of them — such that nearly every Antipapacy has been identified and rectified while the Antipope was yet alive and claiming the Petrine See.”

As I said, Francis is speeding up his assault on the Catholic faith. It would seem that now is the time to identify, resist, and rectify, not to wait for some hazy date in the future only to discover that Francis’s “reforms” have become irreversible and the opportunity to change course has passed.

This article originally appeared in the October 24, 2024 edition of The Stream.

Pictured above: Pope Francis

Photo credit: Pixabay

Out of the Dark Ages and into the Seventh Century

One of my college history professors liked to emphasize that secularization was the most important development in modern history. At the time, it didn’t seem quite as important to me as the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, and the development of the atomic bomb, but I gradually came to see that he was right.

As Solzhenitsyn observed, secularization and the troubles that accompany it happens when men forget God.

However, secularization doesn’t require the kind of atheist society that Solzhenitsyn lived in. It can flourish in societies that acknowledge God but consider Him largely irrelevant.

This attitude is prevalent in most of the Western world but especially in Europe. Having just returned from a three-week European vacation which included visits to Vienna, Venice, and Milan, I was struck by the degree of secularization in places that were once solidly Catholic.

Enlightenment

Some of the tour guides my wife and I encountered seemed to be proud of this secularization. One pointed out that although you see churches everywhere, relatively few people actually attend church services. She seemed to think that this was a sign of progress. Indeed, a common theme of the guides was that Europe had, after many centuries, come out of the “Dark Ages” into the light of humanism. They didn’t use the term “humanism,” but some did use words like “brotherhood” and “fraternity” to describe the higher plateau to which most of Europe had ascended. One of the reasons that Pope Francis is so popular in Europe is that he, too, subscribes to this secular religion of fraternity.

The guides admitted that, yes, there were problems in Europe, such as immigration — but not to worry because the immigrants were rapidly and smoothly assimilating. Often these platitudes were uttered as our walking tour passed clusters of Muslim women clothed in head-to-toe black burqas. Assimilation did not seem to be high on their list of priorities.

It’s not, of course, as though this secular-and-proud-of-it attitude is confined to Europeans. One of our tour groups included a well-educated and well-traveled Australian couple who casually dismissed traditional beliefs as throwbacks to the “Dark Ages,” and who looked upon the Bible as “just stories.”

But Europeans’ dismissal of the sacred sphere is more puzzling than secularization among Australians and Americans. Why? Because Europeans are more dependent on the sacred sphere.

Religion Is Good for Tourism, But Little Else

Tourism is perhaps Europe’s biggest industry. Yet many of the main tourist destinations are cathedrals and castles that were built by people who took religion very seriously. St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel are arguably the main attractions in Rome. St. Mark’s is a high point of a trip to Venice. St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna is a focal point for tourists, and in Milan the two main attractions are the magnificent Cathedral of Milan (the third largest church in the world) and the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which houses Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. Take away da Vinci and the Duomo (as the cathedral is usually called), and you’ve lost half the incentive for visiting Milan at all.

Though Europe’s tourism industry relies on sacred spaces, Europe’s secular elites insist that the sacred is irrelevant to today’s culture. Thus, many look upon Christianity as a relic, a museum piece. The elite view is that Christianity may be useful for drawing in the tourists and also for reminding woke Europeans that they are fortunate not to live in that narrow-minded and guilt-ridden past. Otherwise, it can be safely ignored.

This attitude is reflected in the refusal to include any acknowledgment of the Christian contribution to European civilization in the Constitution of the European Union. It’s also reflected in the self-destructive tendency to squeeze Christianity out of the public square in order to make room for the latest secular trends.

Yet, as Christianity is forced to yield more and more of the public square to secularism, the public square becomes less meaningful. It not only loses the sense of the supernatural, but also the original high intentions of secular humanism — namely, the emphasis on the dignity of man and the rights and liberties that correspond to that dignity. Eventually, the public square becomes merely a reflection of pop culture and, instead of achieving dignity, the masses become slaves to fashion.

Milan provides a rather striking example of this devolution. The two main buildings in Duomo Square are the iconic Cathedral and the impressive Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II just a few hundred feet away. According to one guidebook to the city, the Galleria, which was begun in 1865, is “a hymn to progress” and “a place where the Milanese ‘intelligentsia’ has always liked to meet … possibly at a table in a café’ or restaurant.”

Ah, yes, “a hymn to progress” and, at the same time, a sort of cathedral to human ingenuity. The soaring glass-and-steel ceiling vaults of the Galleria seem to be inspired by the ceiling vaults in a gothic Cathedral.

Nowadays, however, this architectural masterpiece seems more like a hymn to pop culture than “a hymn to progress.” With its restaurants and trendy shops (Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior etc.), it now presents itself as an elegant and upscale shopping mall — a mall that sells trendy ideas and lifestyles along with trendy fashions. For example, one Prada display window features three well-dressed male mannequins and a sign that asks: “What would you want your mom to know about you?” Another window displays three female mannequins and the question: “What do you hope your parents never find out about you?”

One implication of these displays seems to be that gay and lesbian sex and/or sex outside of marriage is cool. The other implication is that parents are old-fashioned and need to get with the times (although most Milanese parents likely succumbed to the religion of diversity a long time ago).

The Fashion Capitol

It would be inaccurate, however, to portray what is happening in Europe simply as a competition between the secular and the sacred. In many cases, the churches actually cooperate in the secularization process.

Here’s an example. As you approach the Milan Cathedral from behind, one of the first things you notice is a billboard-sized ad projected onto the side of a building right across the street from the church. The ad is for a brand of perfume, and it features a voluptuous, Madonna-like singer.

“That’s highly provocative,” I thought, “they should show more respect for Catholics.” Then, as we turned the corner, a still larger projected ad appeared on the side of the Cathedral itself. It was an ad for Prada and it was as blatantly sexy as the one for perfume.

“How do they get away with that?” I asked my wife. She pointed out that the diocese had probably given permission to use the cathedral as ad space in return for money. One imagines that the sum was quite a bit more than thirty pieces of silver.

In Italy and in much of Europe, what began as an opening of the Church to the world under Pope John XXIII has become a surrender to the world under Pope Francis and the progressive bishops he appoints.

Europe’s Future

Meanwhile, a third party has arisen in Europe which rejects both the secular world and Christian belief.

Not far from the Galleria, my wife and I sat in a bistro for coffee and a bite to eat. Through the window we could see two women in black burqas seated on the pavement with their backs against the wall. The burqas covered everything except their eyes, and they fingered prayer beads that, at first glance, looked like rosaries. Their fingers were also gloved lest any man be tempted by a show of skin.

What were they praying for? Peace on earth? Good will to men? Blessings on the Jews and other infidels? Not likely. Granted, there were other Muslims in the square who appeared to have better assimilated. They wore brightly colored ankle-length dresses and minimalist head scarves. And they listened to pop music on their iPods.

But Islam-lite does not seem to be the future of Europe. Rather, it is the hard-line Muslims — those who keep their women in burqas and prefer to live in ghettos and no-go-zones — who seem to be setting the agenda for the continent. Part of their agenda is to limit the free-speech rights of other Europeans. Thus, under pressure from true believing Muslims and true believing leftists, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that criticism of Islam is now a crime.

If there is a “Dark Ages” religion in Europe, it is fundamentalist Islam, not Christianity. Yet Europeans who consider Christianity to be a “museum piece” would not dare to say the same about Islam — except, perhaps, behind closed doors.

What you have instead are tour guides who lament the Christian influence on Europe, yet welcome mass Muslim migration as a sign of enlightenment. When it comes to seeing the reality of Islam, many Europeans might as well be wearing burqas themselves.

This article originally appeared in the October 11, 2024 edition of The Stream.

Pictured above: Galleria in Milan, Italy

Photo credit: Pixabay

How humanism and therapy replaced sin and forgiveness

For Part 1 of this essay, click here.

Philip Rieff’s 1966 book The Triumph of the Therapeutic examined how the therapeutic mentality had swept through secular culture. What was less noted at the time was that the therapeutic focus on self-love was also triumphing over the Christian emphasis on self-sacrifice. Although there are many superficial similarities between the two belief systems, a closer look reveals that humanistic psychology is a counterfeit of Christianity. It has a Christian “feel” but very little to do with Christ or with Christian virtues.

The Therapeutic Virus Corrupted the Christian Code

I’m not suggesting that there was any conscious attempt to counterfeit Christianity. It’s just that many Christians were attracted to humanistic psychology and were (perhaps unconsciously) looking for a way to synthesize it with their faith.

In any event, it wasn’t long before the assumptions of pop psychology had so smoothly and thoroughly permeated the churches that the vast majority of Christians failed to grasp that a fifth column had been invited in. Indeed, many now assume that the therapeutic version of Christianity, with its emphasis on tolerance and natural goodness, is the real thing.

In fact, however, the theory of human potentialism is an attack on the very heart of the Christian faith — the belief that Christ came to save us from our sins. But the self-esteem psychologists didn’t really believe in sin. On the contrary, they believed in the essential goodness of human nature. Maslow was quite up front about this. He once observed that if the doctrine of original sin were true, then his own theories were untenable.

You Think People Are Fundamentally Good … Have You MET Any People?

The central tenet of human potential psychology is that people are basically good. The self-esteem movement rested on the belief that once you “get in touch” with your inner self and discover your essential goodness, self-esteem comes almost automatically. And, sure enough, as Catholics and other Christians learned to accept and esteem themselves, they saw fewer sins to confess.

As I observed a couple of years ago:

One of the things that a great many Catholics discovered almost simultaneously was that they were — to use the lingo of the day — OK. Convinced of their own self-worth, many Catholics abandoned the Sacrament of Penance. Almost overnight, the long lines at the confessional disappeared. Catholics had been so well-schooled in the gospel of self-acceptance that they couldn’t think of any sins they needed to confess.

At this point it would be nice to add something along the lines of, “but then came the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Catholics came to their senses, regained their consciousness of sin, and confessional lines stretched almost as far as the ticket lines at a Taylor Swift concert.”

Of course, under John Paul II and Benedict XVI much lost ground was regained. The publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church provided a reliable guide to the faith, and the initial excesses of the devotees of the humanistic religion seemed to die down. Perhaps those nuns and priests who were most obsessed with self-actualization had already left the Church.

Or, more likely, perhaps the tenets of human potential psychology had soaked so deeply into the culture that no one questioned or noticed them anymore. After all, the therapeutic notion that sin is nothing more than harmless diversity seems to have triumphed over the belief that we are all sinners in need of redemption. The long confessional lines never came back and, to top it all off, church attendance has now fallen to an all-time low. By some natural progression, self-satisfied people who can find no sins to confess will eventually find no reason to go to church.

Evolving into the Opposite

Archbishop Viganò’s contention that the Church is being taken over by Catholics who no longer subscribe to Catholicism, but rather embrace various forms of humanism, may seem a stretch. But his claim is buttressed by the fact that during the last half of the twentieth century something similar happened in the American Church — namely, the substitution of a psychologically based humanistic faith for the Christian faith.

The difference between then and now is that those who embraced human potential psychology didn’t look upon it as a substitute for their faith but as a deepening of it — a conversion to a more highly evolved form of Christianity.

I don’t think that’s true of the current coup in the Church — at least not among the leadership. What’s happening now is more deliberate and more deceptive. What Cardinal Fernandez describes as the “teachings” of Pope Francis are designed not to deepen the Catholic faith but to replace it.

The Tower of Psycho-Babel

Nevertheless, it appears that the two “coups” are related. The entanglement of humanistic psychology with Catholic thought is arguably what made possible the larger coup that is now unfolding.

The first prepared the soil for the second by providing the concepts and vocabulary necessary for shaping the new teachings of Francis — who, incidentally, once taught psychology. We can see the human potential influence on Francis in his fondness for words that seem to be taken straight from Rogers’s nondirective playbook — words such as “listening,” “accompanying,” “sensitivity,” “openness,” “acceptance,” and “inclusivity.”

It’s also telling that, like Maslow, Rogers, and Fromm, Francis downplays the seriousness of sin — even to the extent of advising priests to forgive sins that are unrepented. Like the humanist psychologists of the 1960s and ‘70s, Francis offers us a version of Christianity in which Christ the Redeemer becomes superfluous and we become our own saviors.

Jesus Died for My Self-Esteem

A great many Christians fell for the humanist temptation because it came cloaked in the language of popular psychology. They were seduced into believing that Christianity boils down to self-acceptance and feelings of OK-ness. The fact that in modern times so many Catholics and Protestants (who were mainly attracted to the “power of positive thinking” brand of psychology) were gullible enough to prefer a counterfeit of Christianity to Christianity itself suggests that it could happen again.

We are now in Round Two of the modern humanist assault on Christianity — only this time, the leaders of the assault have not fooled themselves into believing they have discovered a more advanced form of Christianity. Judging from Francis’s insistence that conversion is no longer desirable, we can expect that Christ will eventually be moved to the sidelines of the emerging faith.

Archbishop Viganò’s assertion that the true Church and a false parallel church that seeks to replace it are now contending for the souls of Christians should not be lightly dismissed. Something of a similar nature happened in the Church toward the end of the last century when a psychologized version of Christianity offered itself in place of the true faith. The confusion that resulted is still with us today, and it feeds into the temptation to accept the latest attempt to turn Christianity into humanism.

Let’s not prove to be as gullible again.

This article originally appeared in the August 14, 2024 edition of The Stream.

Pictured above: Pope Francis greets pilgrims

Photo credit: Pixabay

How pop psychology replaced biblical theology.

Among the many “outrages” that led to the excommunication of theologically conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was his claim that a coup d’etat had taken place in the Catholic Church.

When we hear the word “coup” we usually think of a sudden, violent, and illegitimate overthrow of a government. But the coup Viganò speaks of was neither sudden nor violent — though it was certainly forcible, accomplished via the capture of power.

Viganò has used several other terms to get across his idea of what has happened in the Church: “takeover,” “infiltrate,” “penetrate,” “usurp,” “subversive,” “fifth column,” and “counterfeit.”

In addition, he often speaks of two Churches: a true Church and a false church (which he sometimes refers to as the Deep Church). Moreover, following the lead of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, he occasionally refers to the coexistence of the Catholic Church on the one hand and a counterfeit church on the other.

The Successful Shadow Church

Perhaps “counterfeit” is the most useful word to describe the “false church” because if its falsity were obvious, Catholics would reject it. The success of the shadow church lies in its ability to convincingly imitate the real thing. According to Viganò, the most convincing sign of the counterfeit church’s authenticity is that its leaders currently hold the reins of power in the institutions of the real Church. Consequently, they seem to speak with authority.

Currently, they are using that authority to sideline and silence Viganò, whom they charge with schism and various other grave ecclesiastical crimes. At the same time, they have been joined by some otherwise traditional and/or conservative Catholics who dismiss Viganò as an unhinged conspiracy theorist.

In ordinary times, of course, the overuse of terms such as “infiltration,” “subversion,” “fifth columnist,” and “counterfeit” might merit such charges. But Viganò’s point is precisely that we no longer live in ordinary times. And, as Lincoln observed of the Civil War years, “the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present … . As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew … .”

But a great many Catholics seem reluctant to think anew. Rather, they seem to prefer to believe that nothing drastic — like a coup — can ever happen in the Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit, they argue, just wouldn’t allow it.

The Painful Facts

The problem with that line of thinking is that a coup of sorts has already taken place in the Church — and in relatively recent times. From the early 1960s to the 1990s and beyond, progressive Catholics effectively managed to substitute the tenets of humanistic psychology for Catholic theology.

In an amazingly short time, the pseudo-religious teachings of human potential psychologists such as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and Erich Fromm became standard fare for students in Catholic colleges, seminaries, and even in K-12 religious-studies curricula. Instead of the four cardinal virtues, students learned Maslow’s five stages of self-actualization, and instead of learning to examine their consciences, youngsters learned “Values Clarification” —a completely relativistic process of choosing values based on the “nondirective” therapeutic technique developed by Carl Rogers.

The fatal flaw of the nondirective approach was that it was also nonjudgmental. Rogers found that his clients would be more likely to “open up” if he offered them “unconditional positive regard” — a sort of blanket acceptance of all their thoughts and feelings. In this way, according to the theory, clients would learn to accept themselves and eventually to love and esteem themselves. How so? Because, Rogers believed, at the inner core of the person one inevitably finds a good and trustworthy self. And in learning to love one’s self, one learns to love others as well.

It’s not surprising that Rogers’s ideas caught on so quickly among Catholics and other Christians. What he said seemed to echo scriptural themes such as “God created man in His image,” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Judge not,” and so forth. At first glance, Rogerian theory seemed to blend with Christian teaching. And, because of the psychological insights it offered, it seemed to many to be a more enlightened form of Christianity.

The Self as an Ersatz “God”

Although he long ago disavowed Christianity and other “dogmatic” religions, Rogers was initially drawn to Christianity and entered Union Theological Seminary in the hope of becoming a minister. He eventually left his faith behind him, but he retained in his writings the sort of reverential, awe-struck attitude toward the inner self, that devout Christians reserve for God. Indeed, for Rogers, along with Maslow and Fromm, the self became an ersatz ‘god.’

While Christian pastors devoted themselves to helping their flocks find God, Rogers’s mission was to help his followers get in touch with their true selves. For him it was akin to a religious quest, and many of his students responded in kind. Although Rogers discouraged it, many thought of themselves more as devotees than students and many described his 1961 book, On Becoming a Person, as their “Bible.”

Stealth Conquest by Infiltration

My point is that Viganò’s claim that a coup has taken place (or is taking place) under Pope Francis is not far-fetched. It’s not even news. A “coup” (of sorts) already occurred in mid-century America, when a sizable number of Catholics substituted the principles of humanistic psychology for Catholic/Christian teachings. During that period, encounter groups took the place of classroom lessons, sermons were more likely to focus on self-image than on sin, and, in California, an order of 600 nuns responded to Rogerian therapy by marching out of the convent in search of self-actualization.

It wasn’t, however, a political coup. The changes that took place in the Church involved an infiltration of ideas and assumptions rather than an overthrow of an institution. Moreover, there is no evidence that there was any plot or conspiracy to effect the change. It was more a case of moving with the times, and in the America of the 1960s, psychological explanations of life’s vicissitudes were much more in tune with the times than religious explanations. The watchword of those days was “I’m OK and you’re OK” and the focus was on self — “self-esteem,” “self-fulfillment,” “self-awareness” and self-growth.”

In Part 2 I will unpack the subtle charms and hidden moral flaws in this “humanistic” replacement for the apostolic Christianity which the Church was founded to pass along, unadulterated by the spirit of this or any age.

This article originally appeared in the August 13, 2024 edition of The Stream.

Pictured above: Church embraces diversity

Photo credit: Pixabay

The excommunication of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for “his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff” presents us with an opportunity to revisit Viganò’s claim that the pope is not valid.

Among the many reasons Viganò offers for saying so is the possibility that the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio was rigged and thus invalid. The rigging, he says, was largely the work of the Sankt Gallen Mafia, a group of liberal bishops who met regularly in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, supposedly for the purpose of finding a candidate for pope more in line with their humanistic agenda.

Since most of the original Sankt Gallen Mafia are now dead, and since the papal election is conducted in secret, it wouldn’t be easy to confirm Viganò’s charge of election tampering. Moreover, few, if any seem disposed to investigate the matter.

The prevalent attitude among the Catholic commenting class is that the Holy Spirit has spoken and thus the matter is closed.

Well, it’s true that the Church teaches that the pope is protected by the Holy Spirit from teaching error. But does the Church also teach that the Holy Spirit prevents the College of Cardinals from electing the wrong man? As theologian Jared Staudt points out, “the Holy Spirit does not choose the pope … the cardinals choose the pope while praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

The Cardinals Choose the Pope

For support of this view, Staudt cites Benedict XVI’s answer to a question posed by an interviewer for Bavarian television in 1997 (when he was still a cardinal). When asked if the Holy Spirit is responsible for the election of a pope, he responded:

I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for who one must vote … There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked.

In short, the Holy Spirit does not override the free will of the cardinals. He leaves them free to make mistakes, and he leaves them free to sin.

Sin, in turn, may open up a cardinal to scandal and even blackmail. Indeed, Viganò suggests that fear of blackmail may be a major factor in swaying a cardinal to vote for a candidate he knows little about or about whom he fears the worst. The homosexual subculture among clergy in Rome ensures that many of the cardinals are open to blackmail. Moreover, even those who have reformed themselves are vulnerable. A priest may confess his sins and recommit to his vows of chastity but the threat of blackmail still remains. The same is true of “youthful indiscretions” (whether homosexual or heterosexual) committed as a seminarian. The communal nature of seminaries almost guarantees that such indiscretions can always be dredged up at some future date.

The Intimidation Factor

Cardinal electors can also be intimidated into voting the “right way” lest false charges of scandal be brought against them. For example, an attempt to connect Cardinal Angelo Scola to a major political and financial scandal during the election conclave of 2013 seems to have been the main factor in throwing the vote to Cardinal Bergoglio. Up until the scandalous charges were raised, Scola (who was the candidate Benedict favored) was the papal frontrunner.

A more ominous example of false charges is provided by the case of Australian Cardinal George Pell. On the basis of very scanty evidence that he had molested two teenage choir boys, Pell spent 404 days in prison.

It is now widely thought that the trumped-up case against Pell was facilitated by individuals within the Vatican who feared the results of Pell’s investigation into notoriously corrupt Vatican finances. In any event, in 2020 an Australian appeals court unanimously acquitted Pell of the abuse charges, and he was released from prison at age 78.

If nothing else, Pell’s case illustrates that the fear of being falsely accused of abuse is perfectly justified. But that’s not all. It now appears that Pell may have been murdered.

A Suspicious Death

After his acquittal, Pell returned to Rome. On January 9, 2023, he died in a hospital from cardiac arrest following routine hip surgery. At least, that was the story at the time.

More recently, however, Libero Milone, the former auditor-general of the Vatican who worked closely with Pell, raised concerns about the circumstances of Pell’s death.

Among the suspicious circumstances it’s reported that Cardinal Pell was alone in a room after surgery, that the electricity went out and that when it came back on, he was found dead. Moreover, Pell’s nose was broken, leading some to believe that assassins had suffocated him with a pillow. In addition, according to one report “two of Cardinal Pell’s closest confidants in the Church had urged him not to undergo surgery in Rome and instead return home to Australia for the procedure over concerns about his safety and welfare.”

Was Pell murdered to prevent him from divulging what he knew about financial crimes in the Vatican? At this point, it’s mostly speculation. And many Catholics would like to see the speculation go away. Many find it difficult to believe in the existence of a homosexual “mafia” in the Church or in the possibility of a rigged papal election, blackmail, false accusations, and embezzlement, let alone an assassination. Moreover, many may fear that such charges do serious damage to the Church’s credibility.

A Prudent Decision

Now that he has been excommunicated, Archbishop Viganò has come in for harsh criticism from some Catholic quarters for having gone too far. He has been dismissed as an “unhinged” conspiracy theorist who got what he deserved.

Yet Viganò seems to have been largely right about what is going on in the Church and in the world. He was right about the McCarrick coverup and about the extent of both financial and moral corruption in the Church. And he was right about the danger of speaking out against the “Deep State” and the “Deep Church.”

After the publication of his letter about the Church’s cover-up of the McCarrick affair, he went into hiding. Moreover, when he was summoned to Rome in June to face charges of schism, he refused to appear. This could be interpreted as a case of unhinged paranoia. Or it could be acknowledged as a realistic assessment of what happens to those who expose corruption in high places.

In light of the possible assassination of Cardinal Pell and in light of the recent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, Viganò’s decision to keep his whereabouts unknown seems prudent.

With Evidence Comes Credibility

Granted, his rock-the-boat accusations do not always seem prudent. Indeed, some of the conspiracy theories he subscribes to seem over the top.

On the other hand, some of them make a lot of sense. The evidence for the existence of a “Deep State” seems stronger every day. Nowadays, the burden of proof seems to fall on those who deny the existence of a powerful bureaucratic shadow state. Likewise, Vigano’s claim that Francis is an anti-pope may seem extreme to some, but there is such a thing as an anti-pope, and on several occasions the Church has had to decide which of the two claimants to the throne of St. Peter is the valid pope and which is the pretender.

Yes, some of Viganò’s conspiracy theories seem to border on Alex Jones territory, but some of them have gained credibility as more evidence comes in.

The same is true of many of the recent conspiracy theories that most Americans are familiar with. Time has shown that some supposed conspiracies were real conspiracies. For example, the Trump-Russian collusion hoax was just that — a hoax manufactured by the Clinton campaign with some help from FBI agents. According to The Hill, “Democrats associated with the Clinton campaign paid a foreigner to spread salacious lies about Trump (the Steele Dossier) prior to the 2016 presidential election, and then pushed those claims in the lapdog media.”

Another major hoax concerned Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Initially, it was claimed that the contents of the laptop were “Russian disinformation.” Moreover, Joe Biden claimed that he had received a letter from 50 former intelligence officials confirming that the contents of the laptop was “a Russian plant.”

Further evidence, however, has established that the laptop is a genuine item and that its contents are the creation of Hunter Biden. No one (except, perhaps, Joe Biden) still believes that the Russians had anything to do with it. The existence of the laptop is no longer a conspiracy theory, it’s a fact.

A Rigged Papal Election?

As more and more conspiracy theories turn out to be true, one ought to be careful about dismissing Vigano’s claims about a “Deep State” and a “Deep Church” as baseless. It was precisely the power of the Deep State (let’s drop the quotation marks) that suppressed the truth about the Trump-Russian collusion hoax and the Hunter Biden laptop for so long.

One needn’t accept all of Vigano’s conjectures, but some of them ought to be taken more seriously — particularly his claim of a rigged papal election. One good reason to take it seriously is a growing belief that America’s last presidential election was rigged.

A few years ago, any suggestion that the election was stolen could land one in hot water. Democrats wanted to make it a crime to question the voting results, and some employers hinted that election deniers better keep their opinions to themselves

Nevertheless, according to the polls, two-thirds of Republican voters and nearly three in 10 Americans believe that the election was stolen by means of fraudulent mail-in ballots, rigged voting machines, false vote counts, and other measures.

By contrast, there has been very little suggestion among Catholics that the papal election which brought Bergoglio to power was rigged. This is probably due in part to the false perceptions held by many Catholics that papal elections, like papal teachings, are infallible. In short, it’s probable that many Catholics feel that in questioning the decision of the College of Cardinals, they are questioning the choice of the Holy Spirit. In addition, most Catholics respect the office of cardinal and are disinclined to think that a cardinal will do anything other than vote his conscience. Few Catholics are aware of the pressures, intrigues, fear of blackmail, and other factors that may indeed keep a cardinal from voting his conscience.

Finally, apart from these considerations, Catholics tend to believe that the strict protocols which surround the voting process ensure that rigging the vote is well-nigh impossible.

Silencing A Courageous Voice

It’s ironic, of course, that many of those Catholics who believe that the papal elections were honest and aboveboard are probably among the two-thirds of Republican voters who believe the presidential election was stolen.

One other irony is that stealing a papal election would, considering the relatively small number of electors, be a far less complicated business than stealing a national election involving 50 states, millions of voters, and thousands of polling places. Is it really unimaginable that a papal election could be stolen? We know that some of the cardinals were quite dissatisfied with the papacy of Benedict and had attempted to block his election in 2005. There was, after all, a “Sankt Gallen Mafia” (a name they gave themselves), and we know from various sources (such as the biographers of Cardinal Godfried Danneels) that they worked diligently to put Bergoglio on the throne of Peter.

Nevertheless, raising doubts about Bergoglio’s election seems to be a risky business. And if the attempt to silence Viganò is successful, Catholics will have lost one of the few voices courageous enough to challenge the don’t-ask-questions mentality now prevalent in Rome.

Pictured above: St. Peter’s at night

Photo credit: Pixabay

What happens when a civilization loses all of its reference points?

I came across two stories recently that seem to be connected—if you look at them in the right way.

By coincidence, the subject of the first story is…looking at things in the right way.  A German art historian recently discovered that one of Piet Mondrian’s iconic paintings may have been hanging upside down for the last 75 years.

Why did it take them 75 years to figure that out?  Well, it you’re familiar with Mondrian’s work, you can see why.  Mondrian was an abstract artist who specialized in colorful geometric lines. Unfortunately, Mondrian neglected to sign the painting called “New York City 1” in the usual place.  And, unlike the people who print your packages from Amazon, he forgot to include the instructive “up” arrow.

The second story is like unto it.  One headline puts it this way: “Florida mandates annual training for school librarians to help weed out sexually explicit books.”  “Huh,” you might ask, “why do librarians need special training to recognize soft-core porn?  Isn’t it self-evident?  That was Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s reasoning when asked to define “obscenity” in 1964.  He responded, “I know it when I see it.”

But apparently, today’s school librarians who are supposedly well-trained in things like age-appropriateness don’t know what’s obvious when they see it.  And so, the State of Florida has decided to provide some “up” arrows to help the librarians differentiate between “the Gingerbread Man” and “the Genderbread Person.”

When it was discovered that Mondrian had been hanging upside down for quite a while, afficionados of the abstract leapt to his defense.  The catalogue of the museum where the painting hung explained that it doesn’t matter if the picture is hung upside down:

“This may be the truly revolutionary feature of “New York City 1:” the fact that it can be read in any direction, like the street map of a big city, in an attitude of open-mindedness, moving every way at once…”

In fact, that is true of much abstract art.  You can angle it any way you like, and you can assign to it whatever subjective meaning you wish.

But the interesting question about the Mondrian painting is not how it should be interpreted, but how it was discovered that it was upside down. The answer is that an old photo of Mondrian’s studio was discovered which showed the painting displayed in what was presumably the artist’s intention—namely right-side up.

In short, when art historians seek certitude, they turn to objective criteria—such as photographic evidence.  They want to discover the reality of things.

There was a time when artists themselves felt a duty to capture the reality of things in their paintings or statues.  God had created a fascinating world, and artists strove to represent it faithfully.  The general term for this representational art is “realism.”  The realists were not intent on showing you the mysteries of their own inner lives, but in showing you the wonders—both fetching and frightening—of the world we live in.

If you saw a Renoir or a Rockwell hung upside down, it wouldn’t take 75 years for you to notice that something was wrong.  You would know right away.  Why?  Because they were realists who tried to paint things as they are.  They didn’t paint trees with roots in the air or people with two eyes on one side of their face.

There’s no law that says that artists have to paint in a realistic style.  The law might want to get involved, however, if other professionals begin to experiment with modernism.  Imagine a plastic surgeon who tells his patient “In reconstructing your face, Mr. Jones, I will use this Picasso painting to guide my scalpel.”

Luckily, surgeons are held to stricter standards than painters.  And so are teachers—or so we try to convince ourselves.  If a history teacher holds up a Mondrian print and tells his fifth-grade class that “This is a picture of New York City as it looked in 1951,” parents will expect someone to set the teacher straight.

Likewise, a school librarian shouldn’t hold up a book about a girl, and tell students it’s about a boy.  Just as New York City is a real place with recognizable features that are not to be confused with those of Los Angeles, there is a real and recognizable difference between boys and girls.

But you wouldn’t think so by browsing through the stacks of the average school library.  There are shelves full of books about boys who have supposedly become girls, girls who have supposedly become boys, and boys and girls who are still trying to decide which—if any—gender they fit into.

But the big secret which most adults understand is that boys can’t really become girls, and girls can’t really become boys.  Any good biology text will explain why.  And the library’s anatomy books—if they haven’t yet been banned—will show why.

One of the skills that a librarian learns is to assign books to their proper categories.  But what’s the proper category for the boy-becomes girl genre?  Well, since many of these books are biographies or memoirs, they belong in the non-fiction section.  These books are presented as realistic non-fiction, of the kind that will prepare children for the real world.  But, in fact, they are profoundly unrealistic.  They encourage children to pursue fictions—goals that can never be achieved because they are self-contradictory.

The chief characters in these books are living a fiction, or attempting to live a fiction.  This is more obvious in the case of individuals who claim to have transitioned or are contemplating a transition.  But it’s also true of same-sex relationships—one of the hot topics in today’s “Young Adult Fiction.”

Such books often imply that same-sex relationships are essentially the same as opposite-sex relationships.  Likewise, same-sex “marriage” is portrayed as being little different than marriage.  But, as Bishop Joseph Strickland has recently noted, a person who is in a same-sex “marriage” is “living a fiction.”  As members of the same-sex they cannot perform some of the essential complimentary functions of marriage such as consummation, conception, and childbearing without bringing a third person into the picture (often, a paid surrogate). You could call this a “union” or a “commitment,” or a “relationship,” but it’s not true to call it a marriage.  At best, it’s only an imitation of marriage.  It is not a marriage, it’s a “let’s pretend it’s a marriage.”

Indeed, pretense seems to be an important part of the LGBTQ+ lifestyle.  Pride marches are usually replete with Mardi-Gras-like costumes, masks, and sex pantomimes.  The fascination with cross-dressing also suggests a preoccupation with what might be called “a Neverland Complex”—the desire for something that can never be attained.

Which brings us to the subject of drag queens in libraries.  It’s one thing for societies to tolerate the excesses of the occasional pride parade, but it’s another thing altogether for social institutions to put their stamp of approval on such mockeries of normality.

How many parents think that drag queen story hours are appropriate for children?  Undoubtedly, there are some parents who feel a duty to hop on every passing fad, and allow their child to hop on the belly of the strange looking “woman” on the library floor; but let me go out on a limb and assume that the majority of parents don’t approve.

Yet the drag-queen story hour has become a prominent feature of public libraries all across the land.  And since public librarians and public-school librarians get their training in the same places, we can expect that drag queens will soon be popping up in kindergartens and middle schools across the fruited plain.  To seed the ground, several books about drag queens are already available in school libraries.

It’s hard to believe that our modern librarians have had any training in age-appropriate literature.  They have, of course, but it’s quite obvious they need to unlearn whatever they have learned, and learn some common sense instead.  Many of our librarians and teachers have been trained to believe that human sexuality, like a Mondrian painting, “can be read in any direction.”  Hence, they are encouraging children to believe that they can attain to what is not attainable.  They are presenting a fiction as an achievable goal, and the children will eventually pay the price.

Right now, much of the insanity that goes on in schools and school libraries still seems wrong to most of us.  But will it continue to seem wrong?  Or will we soon come to the point where we have lost all our reference points, and can no longer see that, like the famous Mondrian painting, our world has turned upside down?

Hopefully not.  And the State of Florida’s initiative to retrain school librarians to see things properly is a big step toward returning our schools and our culture to sanity.

This article originally appeared in the January 31, 2023 edition of Front Page.

Pictured above: Abstract pattern

Picture credit: Pixabay